


ashes, ashes, dust to dust

by genesis_frog



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Afterlife, Biblical Allusions (Abrahamic Religions), Canonical Character Death, Fire, Gen, Hell, Mild Gore, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:15:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28696068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genesis_frog/pseuds/genesis_frog
Summary: Jack Manifold dies.He gets better.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 43





	ashes, ashes, dust to dust

**Author's Note:**

> jack manifold is simply built different and this moment? raw as hell.
> 
> title is technically a saying but I yoinked it specifically from curses by the crane wives

Jack has thrown himself into Technoblade's way one too many times, been cut down one too many times. He feels it more and more each time, as blood seeps out of his unarmored body, his sickeningly _human_ skin on display for the world to see. He's dying, and this one feels like it'll stick.

The first time, he had burned; Tommy had plunged him into lava and it had filled Jack's mouth and lungs and burned him from the inside out as he screamed and swore and vowed his revenge against Tommy. His skin had never fully recovered from that. Knobs of thick burns swirled over his arms, his fingers never fully bending right again.

The second time, he had gone down fighting. He was in the midst of the rebellion, but in a moment of isolation, Wilbur turned his blade on Jack, nearly slicing him open in a secluded grove of trees. Nobody ever found Jack's body. He had to wake up himself, alone.

The third time is slow. More and more, armed with nothing but his determination and whatever scraps he can scavenge, he throws himself into the fray, at Technoblade's feet. He lays there, again, abdomen open. The withers fly overhead like unholy angels. Jack's blood paints the exposed stones. Once more, he finds himself looking up at Technoblade through shaky vision, and he feels nothing but bitterness. _So this is it? This is it?_

Jack sleeps.

After a moment, he wakes up, and he is _falling._ Jack reaches out for something, anything, but the oak steps of the Prime Path slip through ghostly fingers and he falls through wood and stone and bedrock until he is falling and falling and falling through _nothing._ His eyes squeeze closed of their own accord. The emptiness burns and burns and burns his skin, he's surrounded by sun and stars but they're so close that they eat him alive and the air is so cold that he can hardly move. It feels like he's going to be pulled apart at the seams, shaken until he shatters, devoured by oblivion.

He takes a breath and opens his eyes just a crack. In the distance he can almost make out a figure or two, three. They're not falling, they simply stand, and they seem to be watching him. The blur of what almost seem to be faces are trained on him, hands loosely curled at their sides. It unsettles something deep in his core, a feeling that this is _wrong_ and that he shouldn't _be here._ Jack finds himself screaming and screaming until his lungs are hoarse. With every exhale he makes the fire of the suns invades his body and he screams more until he's breathing fire and he's being eaten alive and his body is burning up and up and up and Jack knows that _he should not be here, so he will not be here._

He's a man on fire, unrecognizable as his flesh melts away until he's just bones, but even so, he reaches up and pulls and every second longer that he continues it kills him more and more but even as his body is consumed his spirit _will not be._ He is Jack Manifold, and he is built different, he tells himself. _This could be worse._ He clenches his jaw and breathes fire through his nose and his bones rattle with the force of crawling upward through nothing but slowly, slowly, he sees the world again.

His arms pass through stone and caves and ores and pull him upward until he sees familiar soil and wood once more - the Prime Path he had fallen through. He reaches up and he's suddenly corporeal, the earth cracking open around his tired, blistered hand. The little ravine around him widens until he can hoist himself out of the earth and with him comes an unholy inferno, wreathing his head like a twisted halo, signaling his return for those who would care to find him.

Jack stands on solid ground for a moment, panting. His skin is no longer scarred, but made new. He's still nearly bald. At least he's clothed. He takes inventory of what he has - nothing, except for scraps of his own rotten flesh, littering the earth around him like remnants of a cocoon. 

Jack picks up a stick. Even if he doesn't have a sword, this will do.


End file.
